1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer systems generally, and more particularly to the field of electronic messaging.
2. Description of Related Art
E-mail client programs generally fall into two categories. A thin client is a piece of software that is designed to be very small, and therefore relies upon a server to perform most system functions and data processing. A typical thin e-mail client therefore relies upon an e-mail server to manage most of the processing associated with e-mail messages.
Web browser based e-mail clients are generally thin clients. With each program session these clients may download and display the headers for the current set of messages stored on the server. The user can then use the information displayed about the sender, received date, subject and other data to choose which e-mail messages to view. Once the user has requested to view the body of a specific message, the thin client may download the full message content from the server. In general, thin clients do not store the actual messages contents beyond the current program session. The e-mail server will generally provide the actual user view of e-mail messages to thin client by sending web pages built in “on the fly”.
Other clients, sometimes called thick clients, may periodically download every message in its entirety. This allows users to view messages when not connected to the e-mail server. These clients typically do not rely upon the server to provide any statistics about e-mail messages other than informing the client about new messages that can be downloaded.
Managing the standard inbox and keeping track of which e-mail messages have not been read, those that have been read, those that require responses and that those that have already been answered may be part of a user's daily routine. E-mail clients generally provide some aids for sorting or searching e-mail messages using information from or about the message including the sender's name, the sender's e-mail address, the subject, the date received, etc. Returning to a specific e-mail in order to re-read and/or respond can be difficult, especially if that e-mail is just one among many with the same or similar subjects or other e-mail headers. This situation can occur when two or more people take part in an extended e-mail conversation. The resulting e-mail “thread” consists of many messages differing only by the number of “Re:” or “Fwd:” directives prefixed to each message's subject. Other e-mail message headers, like the sent or received dates, may not provide enough additional information to ease the locating of a particular e-mail message, When responding to an e-mail message, e-mail client programs may also include the entire contents of the original messages in the body of the response message.
To find a specific message from among all the messages of a specific thread, the recipient generally has to successively open and scan the contents of each message in the thread.
E-mail client programs provide various levels of functionality with regards to handling e-mails. Most client programs give the user the ability to search for messages. When searching for one specific message from among the many messages in an e-mail thread, this results in multiple “hits” due to the inclusion of previous e-mail contents in reply messages.